This file contains the correspondence between Wolff and Mr. Charles Zemont, which consists of letters that range over a span of twenty-seven years. The first letter is from Mr. Zemont, who writes to commend Wolff on his book, Pathways Through to Space. He notes that the “book was a great companion after I had a Transition a few years ago,” and then states that the main purpose for his letter is to ask whether the “Experience” Wolff reports in the book repeats itself.
Wolff responds:
You ask whether “it repeats Itself.” In a sense It can and often has done so, yet in another sense It never repeats Itself. It is “the same yet never the same.” However, there are those who have had but one glimpse and that was enough to change the whole course of their inner and even outer lives. The repeating is not necessary, however desirable. The point is to unite oneself in identity with the Realization and not be concerned about the Experiencing and further glimpses will come at the right time according to their own spontaneous nature.
Wolff then invites Mr. Zemont to visit, and if he so desires, to come to Lone Pine during their summer stay there. Mr. Zemont writes back thanking Wolff for the letter and asking where it is that they reside in Lone Pine.
The next letter in this file is also from Mr. Zemont, and it is written twenty-two years after his last letter; it is obvious that he and Wolff are now well acquainted. He writes of balancing the experience of the “current” and his work “in a mental hospital” as an art therapist, and also notes that he finds himself drawn to study astrology. Mr. Zemont writes again, a little over a year later, to report that “a current [has] prevailed—one of the most sublime consciousness.” He credits Wolff with helping bring this to fruition, stating that “your words seven and one half years ago ‘Slow down the wheels, you have a lot of time’, and in the casual way you said it helped to be a beacon.”
Wolff, who is now living in Lone Pine with his second wife, Gertrude, writes back congratulating Mr. Zemont on “a major Spiritual Experience, grounded in a stability much greater than when I first met you.” Wolff also suggests that what Mr. Zemont expresses as “synchronicity” in his letter is what he means by “being on the Beam,” which is a description that Wolff derived from airplane landings (in the 1920s, he owned his own plane). Wolff explains:
Mostly we humans are living off the Beam, and there is much friction, difficulty and even danger. But when on the “Beam” everything comes right. There is harmony, peace and joy along with a new order of understanding.
The last letter in this file is from Mr. Zemont, and it is written four years after the previous letter. In this note, Mr. Zemont discusses the current trend of using LSD to effect what appear to be mystical states of consciousness, asking the question, “What does it do to the philosophy of the disciplined Sadhana, where these people claim ‘instantaneous results’ while adepts go for years, awaiting in piety, on a path and awaiting the grace that enlightens?” (11 pages)
